Unofficial news and tips about Google

December 3, 2010

Enable the Default Web Apps in Chrome 8

Google Chrome 8 has been launched, but where is the Web Store? It will be available soon. Google has already started to inform developers about the upcoming changes to the extensions gallery:

"These last few months, our team has been hard at work, preparing for the Chrome Web Store launch later this year. Extensions and themes for Google Chrome will be part of this new store."

While waiting for the Chrome Web Store launch, you can enable the apps section from the new tab page and install the 3 default web apps: Gmail, Google Calendar and Google Docs. Here's how to do that:

1. Close all Google Chrome windows.

2. In Windows, right-click on a Chrome shortcut from your desktop, select "Properties" and append the following text to the Target field: " --enable-default-apps" (don't use quotes, but don't forget to add a space before adding the command line flag). Click "OK" to close the dialog and then open Google Chrome.

On a Mac, quit Chrome, open the Terminal and paste this:

open /Applications/Google\ Chrome.app --args -enable-default-apps

For Linux you could use this:

/opt/google/chrome/google-chrome -enable-default-apps

3. Type chrome://extensions/ in the address bar (or click on the wrench menu and go to Tools > Extensions).

If it doesn't work, then you probably made a mistake when adding the command line flag --enable-default-apps. Type about:version in the address bar. If you don't see "--enable-default-apps" in the command line section, then you haven't added the flag. You may need to close all Chrome windows, kill all Chrome processes in the task manager (Chrome.exe in Windows) and start again.

I've tested this trick in Windows and Mac OS X using the latest Chrome 8 build.

ok, i enabled apps and now i don't understand what's the big difference?

apps are just shortcuts? gmail app opens just like ordinary tab, with omnibox, bookmarks bar and other usual stuff. so what 's the point? being the most opened webpage on my computer gmail has already occupied the left top position among the favorites.

Now I see the problem, these are not Web Apps, they're mere links to the services that you can pin or open fullscreen, and both options are already available to any tab without the need of --enable-default-apps.

I'm sure this is not the final behavior of the system, if I remember it right, the apps have bigger icons and are pinned by default.

I've followed all the steps above. I got the "--enable-default-apps" (without quotes) flag showing up in about:version. I got my language set to English but still no sign of apps on my new tabpage whatsoever. I'm using Chrome developer build 9.0.597.0 on WIN7 x64. Too bad... I hope they'll fix it in 10.x

never mind, I just got it to work. I refresh the chrome://extensions page once again and I see the Apps selection option appear. But I miss the App icons I had once on my tab bar. Will they return or will it stay pinned tabs? I really liked the app icons even though they took more space.

I strongly suggest you carefully go through all the listed steps, and if you still think there's a bug, please search for it on the bugs list, and then file a new issue, if you fail to find it already listed.

has anyone noticed that when you search for christmas on google the "everything" icon on the sidebar on the left changes to a christmas tree? hannukah changes it to a dreidel, and kwanzaa to the black liberation (pan african) flag. i love google.

I got Most Visited and Recently Closed sections back on the new tab by the radical approach of doing nothing whastsover, but not the web apps, which I completely don't care about because its an incredibly useless feature. Ta.

Now it's working on my XP SP3 box.Tested with Chrome 9.0.597.0 dev and Chromium 10.0.603.0.You really have to change the UI language to en-US once. After the apps are displayed, you can safely switch back to the localized version.It makes no difference if the command line argument is preceded by one or two dashes. Which is quite surprising.

Interestingly, I first enabled this in Canary version I use at home, and now Apps showed up in the stable build at work as well. I double checked in about:version to confirm this was not enabled by a flag, so this means it successfully synced from Canary instance and automatically showed up. So now the flag is not required anywhere anymore. My guess is Google will just activate the default apps in everyone's Google accounts (on 7th of December or whenever they decide to) and those will propagate to the browsers without any additional updates... Nice.

if nothing works, just select "restore default settings" at the bottom of the "under the hood" section. I had to do that because there was no choice of language available in the dev version i am using.

Tried it on Ubuntu 10.10... Got 2 apps: Docs, Gmail. created shortcuts... but all they do is open chrome...doesn't even forward it to appropriate address. And how do I unhide apps? I'm running 9.0.597.0 dev. Thanks.

Works for me on the Dev Channel. I'm not too crazy about them... It doesn't seem like any kind of new feature. It's just a button on the "new tab" page. Hardly an extension, or a web app. A regular old Pinned tab is exactly the same thing.